Second Federal Judge Declares Heath Care Reform Unconstitutional

A
second federal judge has ruled President Obama's health care overhaul
to be unconstitutional, following a similar decision from a Virginia
judge in December. And like that judge, Roger Vinson of Federal District
Court in Pensacola, Florida, said the law could remain in effect while
the cases make their way through the court system--which could take as
much as two years, The New York Times' Kevin Sack reports.

Vinson
found that Congress can't require people to buy insurance. Right now the Obama administration is facing these types of legal challenges
to its signature piece of legislation from more than 26 states. Two
other federal judges have ruled the opposite way, that the health care
law is constitutional. Behold liberals explaining the result, conservatives gloating, and a few predicting where things will go from here:

We Saw This Coming, The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen
writes. "Vinson had already telegraphed the outcome, so the ruling just
makes official what everyone expected anyway. ... Republicans are
thrilled, of course, because activist court rulings are to be
celebrated, just so long as it's activism the right can agree with." But
remember, Benen writes, "overall, about a dozen federal courts have
dismissed challenges to the health care law. In other words, when you
hear on the news that 'courts' have a problem with the Affordable Care
Act, remember that it's actually a minority of the judges who've heard
cases related to the law."

Read It and Weep, Michelle Malkin
writes. "Hey, remember when conservatives objected to the Obamacare
federal individual mandate on constitutional grounds and the liberal
establishment laughed? The word of the day: 'Void.'"

Just as Public Opinion Was Changing, The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn
notes. "Ironically," health care reform's "political fortunes seem, finally, to be improving.
Support for outright repeal appears to have ebbed and it's becoming more
clear that even many of those who oppose the law want it strengthened,
not weakened."

What you may not understand is why the entire law was ruled
null and void, if the ruling really only discussed the
unconstitutionality of the individual mandate. As District Judge Roger
Vinson explains in his ruling, the bill did not pass with a standard
severability clause, which typically bills like this would have. That
allows a judge to split off unconstitutional pieces from a bill in
litigation while leaving the rest of the bill, having passed
Constitutional muster, intact. The severability clause is a feature of
almost all major legislation in Congress, and it was in the ACA at one
point, but through the different versions, somewhere down the line, it
was excised. This gave Judge Vinson the power to decide on his own
whether or not to sever the individual mandate from the bill. ... So if
the Supreme Court upholds this ruling – and that’s not out of the realm
of possibility – Democrats in Congress will have nobody to blame but
themselves.

Everyone Will Freak Out, The Atlantic's Andrew Cohen
predicted last week. But they shouldn't. What really matters is that
"two of the Supreme Court's most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas
and Antonin Scalia, [chose] to signal to friend and foe alike where they stand
on the Commerce Clause--and almost certainly the Patient Protection Act
itself." The two dissented strongly in the case of Alderman v. United States, which "colleagues [chose] not to hear (and thus not to overturn)." Thomas and Scalia suggested not overturning this meant
"Congress could ban possession of french fries that have been offered
for sale in interstate commerce." Seeing this come from these two justices, Cohen explains, "confirms to the world
that no more than seven votes on the Supreme Court are still in play
over the constitutionality of the federal health care measure."

It All Comes Down to One Guy, Drew M.
writes at Ace of Spades, seeing Anthony Kennedy as the key swing voter.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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